‘Black widow’ dodges life sentence for double killing

THE woman dubbed “the black widow”, who hired a hit man to kill her husband and then had him killed because he blackmailed her, showed remorse for the killings and did not deserve life imprisonment.

Portia Tsotetsi did not deserve to serve more than an effective 20-year jail sentence for the double murder, Judge Tati Makgoka ruled in the Pretoria High Court yesterday.

The judge turned down an application by the director of public prosecutions for leave to appeal against the “lenient” sentence meted out to Tsotetsi.

Family members who had attended the earlier court proceedings gasped in shock on hearing that she would serve an effective 20 years in jail.

“She should have received a double life sentence,” the enraged brothers of her husband, Standerton teacher Nzimeni Sithatu, said after Tsotetsi dodged a life sentence.

Although she was sentenced to 20 years on each murder, the judge said earlier that the sentences should run concurrently as the murders were closely related to each other.

Tsotetsi first hired Dumisani Ngubeni to murder her husband.

He allegedly killed Sithatu in February 2012 by hanging him from the ceiling in the bathroom of the couple’s home.

Tsotetsi claimed she knew nothing about her husband’s killing, as she took sleeping pills that night and went to bed.

She said when she woke, she discovered him hanging.

Ngubeni was murdered three months later after he blackmailed Tsotetsi for more money.

Tsotetsi called him to her home after “agreeing” to pay him for his silence. When he arrived, she and Stanley Dube overpowered him and stabbed him to death.

Dube was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role.

Judge Makgoka found mitigating circumstances warranting a lesser sentence than life as Tsotetsi’s husband had infected her with HIV and because she had spent five years in prison awaiting trial.